“That is for tempting the Englishman when I had not told thee to tempt him,” he said, trying to sound very angry.
“Yes, Father,” she whimpered, and each sob was a knife in his heart. But when she was alone, she curled luxuriously on the mattress and let the tears roll a little, enjoying them. And the heat spread through her, helped by the sting of the blow.
It was a kind night, and the Java skies swam with stars, huge sparks of light in a carpet of ravened sea. The village was sparse with light. A fire flickered sleepily in the dusty campong. Around the doorways and verandas the men and women sat and talked or listened or contemplated. The children were mostly in bed asleep.
But over the men and over the women there was a waiting, a somberness. Their minds reached towards one hut, and they prayed, each in his own way.
N’ai writhed on the sleeping mat in agony. The pain was centered in her loins, and the fire of it spread through her entrails and through her veins and through her nerve channels, into her brain and eyes and hands and feet and into every molecule of her.
Now the pain was like an ocean within and over her, a placid sameness to the depth of it; though far beneath the surface there were peaks and valleys, plains and chasms, the surface stretched smooth the agony.
This pain was bearable, when the pain itself was part of the whole, the life of the body, the essence of it. But no ocean stays forever placid, storms come, winds claw the surface and tear the seas to highs and lows, tormenting. Storms are birthed in the bowels of wind and sky and cold and heat, and then, full-fledged, the storm takes the sea and shakes it and makes it monstrous. Thus was her pain, for now her pain moved jagged. It moved from ocean into storm, and the agony built from her loins and raced the paths of her and she twisted, ripped by its violence, spread by its violence. Her cries broke from her mouth and sped through the space of the stilted hut, over the hut and village quiet, out into the night, into the jungle, to mix delicately with sibilance of wind and hum of cricket and drone of mosquito, to rest at last in the sigh of surf pounding reefs of Java coast, south but a little way.
The sweat poured from her body and wet the mat, and she lay naked, her legs clawed wide by the pain, and she cursed men and all men and most the man who had done this to her, hating men with a hatred of monumental size, but most the one who had hurt her so, hurt her to this teetering death that took so long, so long.
“Tuan Allah,” she whimpered as the storm-pain blew its violence to a peak, “give me death, I beg Thee, give me death.”
“Ayee,” the old crone said simply, wiping the sweat from her, “pray not for death, N’ai, for that will come to pass soon enough. Pray better for life.”
The cries parted the girl’s lips as the pain built to impossibility and she twisted. The cries caught in her larynx and they became screams, a single scream which bent to the curve of pain, and subsided as the tide withdrew to ocean pain, once more at ocean strength.
“Wah-lah!” The old woman said testily, then shifted her betel nut chew to the other side of her mouth, “Push little one, push harder, push with the pain and let us both have done with the birth of the child.”
N’ai could bear the pain at ocean mood. Exhaustedly she opened her eyes and looked at the woman, saw the red-stained, needle-filed teeth of the old way, saw the flat withered dugs which once were breasts, felt the smile and confidence of the dark, dark eyes. “Will it be long?” she asked tiredly.
“Longer than some, shorter than others,” the old woman said and squatted more comfortably, waving away the mosquitoes. “If thou would push with the pain and not fear it, then it will be very soon. Thy hips are wide and strong, and thy body strong, and the child-to-be’s exit is firm and unscarred. There is nothing to fear for thee or for the child. As I am the best midwife in the village, or in these parts for that matter, as sure as I am Buluda, the midwife, the maker of potions, there is nothing to fear.”
“Wah-lah,” N’ai said, wan and very tired, “it is hard this time. I beg thee give me a little water.”
Buluda fetched the water and helped her to drink, and she had put a little sangi bark into the water which made it very healthful.
“I thank thee,” the girl said. She lay back and let her eyes wander the comfort of the hut, seeing the rafters and the screens and the cooking place and the eating-living-thinking space. “Where is Tua?” she asked, suddenly concerned.
“Where he should be,” Buluda said, “asleep with thy husband’s mother. Would thou have thy son here tonight, with thee birthing? Does thou think a three-year-old can help?” Her laugh was more a cackle and a spill of red betel-juice pencilled her chin, hung momentarily in a droplet, then fell to the matted floor.
“Chide me not, dear Mother Buluda.” The girl’s lips were pocked with teeth marks where she had bitten her flesh when the last pain had soared. But the scars were only transients and they made her lips more red, more pleasing red.
“And Tua, now that’s a foolish name for a boy,” Buluda was saying. “That’s no name for a boy.”
A smile touched the lips of the girl as she thought of her son and his father. “I like the name,” she said softly, “it is a good name.” She sighed and wearily moved the sweat from her face and neck. “It is hot tonight.”
“Yes. But this night is a good night for a birth. The omens are good.” Buluda felt the penetration of the girl’s scrutiny and she kept her face impassive. “Rest, child, rest and gain strength. It will not be long.”
Buluda got up and eased the ache in her shoulders and pottered around the hut checking that all was ready against the time.
Another tide of pain swarmed the girl and Buluda fondled the monstrous stomach, molding it, helping it. “Push hard, little one, push with thy pain. Let thy pain help thee. Push.” Her voice was as soothing as her gnarled hands, and though both her voice and her hands were strong and confident, her mind was not confident. Ayee, she told herself, too much pain and too long and too early. This is not good for one so young, not on the second birth. On the first, Wah-lah, that was different, very different and not hard. But this, this has too much pain and the portents are not good. Did not a hawk sail the eastern sky this noon when the pains began? Did not a toad cross the path to the hut as I hurried confidently to the hut of the mother-to-be? Ayee, she thought grimly, a hawk in the eastern sky and a toad on the path are bad omens at a second birth.
So Buluda continued her vigil and as the pains ebbed and flowed, she soothed the body as best she could. The ointments were ready and the herbs were ready and the water boiling on its charcoal fire. There was nothing for her to do but be patient. The position of the life-to-be was good and no harm should come to mother or child, but there seemed to her to be a strangeness in the space of the hut, and she feared for the child-woman she loved.
Wah-lah, Buluda thought, oh that I could be so young and beautiful, that I could be there, lying in child birth, not old and useless and without. She leaned forward and stroked the brow and the long raven hair, glorying in the deep bronze satin of the skin. She let her hands wander over the body, over the fullness of the breasts — seeping with the goodness of the milk of life — down over hips and stomach, grotesque yet beautiful with the marvelousness of fulfullment, over loins and thighs, soothing them, enjoying them, this beautiful body, hairless and pure.